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It has often been said that Democrats govern by means of the heart, and Republicans by means of the head. What would be wrong about a nonpartisan political party governing by means of a good dose of both?
Today, however, neither major party platform conforms to the United States Constitution, which loves both the heart and the head. Both parties resort to hollow platitudes to guide their party bases. For example, while driving through Idaho recently I saw this Idaho Republican Party billboard slogan: “Faith, family, freedom.”
These are all seemingly wonderful concepts, but what do they mean? What kind of faith, for example? The good faith of the Third Commandment which says no one should enter into a contract, an agreement, a promise, or an oath, using the name of God, and then take the name of God in vain by failing to uphold the agreement? Or does it perhaps mean a particular variety of theological faith like the evangelical faith, to the exclusion of all other faiths?
What kind of family are we talking about here? One organized under our current no-fault marriage laws where parents can hit the road and leave children in a lifetime of anxiety and depression because one parent looked sideways at the other one day? One where a busy young working couple is so anxious to become rich and live in luxury that they can’t imagine ever bringing a child into this life, with all the time, effort, and expense that entails?
What kind of freedom is being championed here? Libertine freedom, where any moral choice you can think of flies equally well with any other moral choice? Or maybe libertarian freedom without responsibility, where one takes care of oneself, but lets one’s neighbor rot in ignorance and poverty without offering a hand?
The United States Constitution wants nothing to do with either of our two grand political parties today. Both are fatally flawed. Democrats want a big national government that marginalizes state and local governments. Republicans want states’ rights, but they also want an aristocracy of the wealthy together with evangelical church leaders running the country at the national level.
The U. S. Constitution wants an enlightened combination of head and heart. It wants Republican-oriented state and local home rule, along with local government and private bailouts for the unfortunate. It also wants Democrat-oriented educational attainment and citizen participation aiming for a major lifting up of the health, education, and welfare of the entire electorate, but again the great majority of this happening on the local level. The Constitution also wants a broad distribution of income and assets across all the people, not mainly in the hands of a wealthy elite.
Republicans want to overthrow the Constitution quickly, in 2024 if possible. They do that by packing the federal and state judiciaries with political appointees, by instituting medieval legal theories like “absolute immunity” from prosecution for presidents and senators, and by purchasing elections through unlimited corporate donations to campaigns or by gerrymandering.
Democrats want to overthrow the Constitution slowly, like a boa constrictor slowly suffocates its prey. They do that by federal “pre-emption” of state administered programs and by striving to meet every human need through federal government programming and spending, even if we must borrow all the money from China to do it.
Both political parties accomplish their goals today by electing constitution-ignoring autocrats as presidents, and congresspersons and Supreme Court members who refuse to participate in term-limits necessary to protect democracy from life-long tyrannical rulers.
Here is how you can tell whether a presidential candidate is an autocrat or a constitutionalist. Does he/she design, decree, and implement law on his/her own initiative, or invite the people’s Congress to make the laws and restrict himself/herself to merely implementing them, as democratic constitutional law requires?
All of this should be on the minds of every voter participating in the 2024 election. But currently, little to none of it garners any consideration at all, and that is why not only the party leaders, but all of our constitution-illiterate people are putting our country off balance.